Marching Into the Peace Corps, Pt 32: More Lies Infomercials Tell

The other day nothing seemed to be on TV, so I stopped and tuned into a channel that plays a lot of infomercials. I like background noise because it makes the house feel less empty, and I’m not apt to be disturbed from what I should be doing. In that case, it was a little house cleaning.

As I was moving around with the TV on, the “6 Week Body Makeover” infomercial was on, and although I’ve seen it several times and bought the program several years ago, the announcer said something that had slipped past me for the last 6 years: “Exercise only 18-20 minutes, 2-3 times a week and you will get fabulous results. No longer perform exercises your body doesn’t need.” That grabbed my attention like it had never before, and the first question I had was, “what exercises does this program feel are unnecessary for the body?”

Many times I had heard stories about people that exercise on a regular basis who come to love doing a daily workout, and although I can’t say I love working out yet, I can say it’s become a habit I look forward to on a daily basis. My moods have improved, my waistline is shrinking, and I have the strength and stamina to get through them, which is a big emotional plus. There are some exercises because of my knees I can’t perform, but I’ll do everything else to the point of muscle fatigue to the best of my fitness level. If I want to push the envelope, I perform multiple workouts of varying intensities. They have become a part of my life, and that’s something I never thought I’d say or honestly feel.

My mind drifted back to the time when I used to perform these exercises, and I never saw results. I think I know why, but I could be all wet about it, too. There is almost no load being placed on the muscles in a short 18-20 minute span, and you’re not even going to hit a cardio target heart rate, which is where the fat burning takes place. Even if you could get your heart rate into that zone, the next problem would be the time factor: you must be in that heart rate zone for at least 30 minutes, but preferably 45 minutes, to get the most out of it.

This is where a heart rate/calorie watch comes in handy – it will tell you what percentage of your heart you are using during exercise. If you check it first thing in the morning, it will also tell you what percentage of your heart is being used during a resting heart rate. If your exercise heart rate and your at rest heart rate aren’t that much different, you’re not burning fat, and that’s scientific fact.

For example, say you purchase the “Hip Hop Abs” series that’s so popular right now, and you’re wearing a heart rate/calorie watch on your wrist. At the end of a 45-minute workout, you check the calories burned and find the watch reports only 100 calories were burned. You would think the workout doesn’t work and you probably wouldn’t use it ever again – and tell all your friends and neighbors not to buy it because “it doesn’t work”. If you periodically checked the heart rate and the readout reported you were using only 40% of your heart’s capability, the problem wouldn’t be the program – it would be you for not using more of body’s capacity.

Now if this is the first workout you’ve ever done or you’re very out of shape, chances are you were huffing and puffing, and this was the best you could do, this is actually a great result! If you stick to it, assuming the program is well designed and your diet is nutritionally sound, your ability to perform cardio moves will dramatically increase over time – it has to if you’re consistent. You will then lose fat and inches, too!

Michael Thurmond does advise his clients to start up a walking plan, which is good advice, but he never goes into the plateau problem when it comes to exercise – only with food, and that’s only part of the problem. A plateau can happen for any number of reasons, and there are ways to break through them. When it comes to walking, you can hit a plateau quickly because it doesn’t take much for your body to adapt to the movement. You have two choices to break through this wall: you can increase your intensity (speed), or you can increase your distance. I can’t recall his program ever mentioning this important fact. Don’t get me wrong – walking is a great exercise to begin with, and I used it to get started, but if you’re consistent, your routine will have to change or you will no longer see results.

So you do need to work out more than the advertised 18-20 minutes with a resistance band, and whatever the prescribed time allotted for walking. You can’t expect your body to reshape itself if it does the same few exercises, at the same weight or resistance level, for the same few minutes. The human body is incredibly complex and phenomenally wonderful in its ability to adapt and evolve beyond what we think it can do. You catch a cold, and the white blood cells race to attack the invading germs, and then they retreat when the threat is over. Muscles perform much like white blood cells: they respond to the exercise stimulation (by growing), and when the “threat” is over (plateau), they retreat (shrink) because the body has adapted to the load being placed on them.

You have to always push forward at full intensity while you’re losing weight. When you hit your goal, you can then maintain by way of calories and cutting back on the intensity because the body has been trained into an efficient machine. If you take up the maintenance approach while you’re trying to lose weight, you will ultimately become frustrated and give up, and that’s the big mistake a lot of people who are exercising do. The other big mistake is thinking calories don’t count and exercise isn’t important because you’re already there, slipping back into junky eating habits and revert into the couch potato you once were.

So don’t believe your body only needs “selective” exercising like certain diet and exercise plans claim – your body can benefit from exercising all muscles. Why? The more lean muscle tissue you develop, the more calories you will ultimately burn. Muscle tissue “eats” a higher number of calories, and if your diet is sound, those calories will come from stored body fat and not from sugar, water, or alcoholic sources. Muscle is your friend, and the more you develop, the sexier your body will look.

If you’re a man, you want to perform 8-12 repetitions of an exercise, if you’re a woman and want the long, lean muscle tone, aim for 12-15 repetitions, but keep your weights reasonable. This doesn’t mean perform only one set – you can perform multiple sets, but adhere to the repetitions number based upon your personal goals. Don’t take on too much weight or swing the weights during moves or you risk injury – you want form over weight every single time. If you can’t perform all repetitions, switch to a lower weight during the exercise.

Learn to see through the lies infomercials tell you and always remember the golden rule: “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is!” You don’t get something for nothing in real life so don’t expect that rule to change when it comes to your body.

If you don’t like trying to find all the segments of this series, you can locate the links to them here and they will return you the exact spot on the appropriate site.